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Life is a Meditation

January 23rd, 2026

I've recovered from my sickness. Tomorrow I'll go on a date with C, we'll do some fun stuffs.

I went on a date yesterday with A, she's going to Seattle to visit family this coming week.

I'm losing touch with E. I don't feel that close to her, and yes, I am distancing myself. Our conversations mainly revolve around her social life, which I think is interesting, but it's not relevant to me. Perhaps I am just a pessimist, but I don't think I can live with that sort of drama and yapping for a great majority of my life.

I think I will talk to C about being exclusive tomorrow. I don't particularly feel good tip-toeing around the topic like this, and I haven't made it clear I'm still dating other people. But I'm pretty confident that C could be the one, and I knew that from the first date.

I don't know. It seems like a lot now that I think about it. Maybe it's just the times of the times getting to my head. Perhaps she is the one, perhaps not? I am not so confident, but I am feeling more and more of it out.

I am just a person after all, it's my first time living.

Of Politics

I've chosen to not vote going forward. I am apathetic to the idea of politics, and I do not care what happens in the upper echelons of American society.

When I engage in politics it ruins my mental health. And, when I discuss it with others, how many relationships, of both left and right wing, have I destroyed by just sympathizing with the politics of the other side.

I cannot stand it anymore. It is a waste of time and energy, both of which I have limited amounts. My vote is meaningless in the eyes of a super PAC, and I have no desire to go protesting in the most liberal city in America, as if any protest here were meaningful.

I do not care what happens on the news except for what happens to my stock portfolio, and I do not care what politics any of my friends or family has to say or bring up.

Plans

I'm trying to rebuild a sense of social life, not that I in any particular phase in my life ever had a burgeoning social life, and I realize that's probably one of the most important aspects of any life. The relationships you're able to hold.

Money is good to chase, and there's a real possibility I could keep spending my time getting more money. It's true. But to be honest with you there's more to life than just money, there's spending the money too. I'm only going to be in my twenties for another five years after all.

Is it that I am afraid of wasting my time? I am. Perhaps there's the idea out there I shouldn't let my fears guide me, but my hopes. But perhaps my fears can guide me in a way regardless.

I'm curious, why should we be guided by hope and not by fear?

Buddhism

I started a book by Thich Nhat Hanh, and I started to think about my own Taoist and Wittgensteinian beliefs. I started to understand how I felt, what I was feeling in this very moment, and see myself for what I felt.

Buddhism feels forceful in its teachings, that there are these immutable facts about the world. Whether or not they are true I'll leave to God, but for me I feel as if they are pointing to something greater. Thich Nhat Hanh says it quite plainly, look at the moon and not the finger—and my understanding is that language evolves over the century, and each interpretation of words are personal to an individual's life.

So the words come to me, and I see and hear the words, but do I understand them? I think the only true way to understand such words is to look inward, I understand that. But there are many words I do not understand, and there are many things I do not understand.

I do think that there are a lot of confusing things in life, and perhaps meaning in life, of which I search for, is one of them. Hope.

The Vinegar

I dip my finger in the vinegar and I taste it. I was raised in a Confucian household with strict hierarchies and rules and laws. A secular household encased with meaning. I read Taoist literature in my spare time and I understand what it means for vinegar to be sweet as it is. Now I dip my finger one last time to taste it as bitter, a bitter vat of suffering.

But are these not all true? I suppose there's that parable with the five blind men and the elephant. Seemingly contradictory things really can be true and point upwards to greatness.

It's often confusing and convincing from time to time, what the truth looks like. And I suppose wanting to tell others the truth too. Sometimes I feel the need to get up and exclaim what I believe is right and wrong in front of the many crowds.

There are things that I am and things that I am not. There is self and there is no-self. I propose that all these words of truth and all the understandings of it, perhaps, Wittgenstein was right when he said that there is the mysticism beyond the use of language. Perhaps that's what really is meant by it all, that, to look into the stars at night, and to breathe the air. To hold opinions and not hold opinions. To hold judgements and not hold judgements. To hold words and not hold words, why isn't this our humanity coalescing in the sky?

I think that what I mean to say is that there is a truth of it all. And there is a non-truth of it all. There is something in the sky, I cannot say for certain, there is something in the air, I cannot say for certain. There is a Oneness, and a Separateness, there's something there, and there's nothing there.

Humanity is the word. It is hard to say, but it is in the infinity, the pause before standing beneath the night sky and taking in a cold breath of air. The cars swiftly pulsating by, the lights flickering in the dark, and the nhilism creeping in the back of my mind.

I'm underneath the night sky in my car, in Henry Coe State Park. The car rumbles as I've turned on the engine to warm myself up, and the cold creeps into the car. It's deathly cold at night in the mountains, and I wonder why I can't seem to sleep it off. But I look up through the sun roof. It's up there. The moon and stars. I can hear the silence of the forest surround me, and I can only hope to see.

Why, I'm only human, and I'll only continue to be human alongside my fellow human beings. Making human mistakes and rights. Of karma and not, of good and bad, and of justice and evil, and of all that is above the sky and below it, I realize I shall see it with my eyes just as it is, and nothing more than that at all.

For is it ego? Is it non-ego? I know not what drives me to words, and I know not what drives me in search for meaning and answers, but perhaps a natural curiosity, and a hope for an understanding of this world, and a desire for understanding, but perhaps with the simple resolution that "the world is all that is the case."

The Zen say to look to the moon, and Wittgenstein says to look, don't think. Mishima says the words are corrosive in their nature in that they erode the meaning of reality, and that the truth are in the starry gaze of the altar bearers looking up towards the sky in their bronzed masculinity. Les Miserables revolutionary points up and says, "Thou art perfection!"

Perhaps God is Melville's whale. Perhaps God is the bed that Ishmael and his good friend sleep together in. Perhaps God is in the memories of Proust as he wakes from his slumber to find himself aged twenty years in the future, and tears come to mind as he remembers the past time. Perhaps God is in little Pip and his expectations, and perhaps God is in the shoes that any of us wear at any given moment, and the things that come to an fro.

What is language, but the cold steel against a warm reality? Or the warm blade against a cold reality?

I wave my hand to a wild fish. It comes to greet me, and I say hello. The fish asks, "Where is the coral reef?" I reply, "I don't know." The fish asks, "Where is know?"

There's no need to rush to an answer. The stillness awaits. Life may slip away tomorrow, but even so, it is life.

Life is a meditation.

Of words

There are so many words, so many infinities, so many yielding threads and lines that can congregate upon my soul and embellish it with a sense of the truth, and a temporary sense of the fullness.

There are many decisions and things to make, and ideas that come to mind, why, words are powerful things, but are they true? The map and territory?

What I feel at this very moment, perhaps it is headache. Perhaps it is heartache. There are a great many things that need to happen and do, but perhaps, perhaps it is okay.

Why, life is a meditation, and I will continue to think. And I will continue to suffer! And I will continue to ask, who am I, and wonder, why I feel so way, and wonder, perhaps why do I want to know why I feel a certain way?

And perhaps, one day, I'll come to the curiosity of it all, and that the world is all that is the case, and the limits of my language are the limits of my world, and most importantly see that my feelings are simply as they are. They exist as a part of me, and not as some weird entity to be rid of, and although there's a part of me that does, that's okay. It's all of me, and it's all not of me, and the contradictions overlap and coalesce and split apart to and fro, and even more so, those contradictions and parts make me all the more human, and they make my reality all the more whole, and I realize, that, perhaps of it all, that perhaps those parts are really just one.

One with not just me, but one with the world.